Compliance & Regulation

The amount of immigration and asylum advice available across the UK “does not meet the need or demand”, the rebranded Immigration Advice Authority has said.

Barristers may “sometimes allow their zeal to advance a client’s interests to embrace tactics which are ethically questionable”, their regulator said yesterday.

A lack of digital skills across the UK could be a risk for consumers and law firms if lawyers “do not fully understand” new technology, the SRA has warned.

A specialist chambers of financial services barristers is filling “a gap in the market” by setting up as an alternative business structure regulated by the Bar Standards Board.

A partner at leading fee-share firm gunnercooke has been fined £14,000 for using the practice’s client account as a banking facility.

A solicitor has been struck off for telling clients to pay small sums of money into his personal account – but, very unusually, his identity has been kept secret.

A conveyancing partner who asked the seller’s solicitor if he could backdate completion by a day to save his client stamp duty land tax has been struck off.

The struck-off solicitor jailed for 14 years for the Axiom Legal Financing Fund fraud has been ordered to pay back £1.1m or face a further five years in jail.

A solicitor who failed to comply with an order made by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal in 2020 has now been suspended for a year.

Two fee-earners at conveyancing giant ONP Solicitors have been disqualified from the profession after they were jailed for drug dealing.